Upon its dedication in 1896, the Haskell Oriental Museum was a Christian institute aiming to understand Biblical lands. Its Egyptological collection was premiere in America, but it was pale by global standards. However, the Museum took tremendous leaps forward between 1919 and 1931, led by the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted via the funding of John [...]

As exemplified by Greek Enlightenment during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, the literacy thesis posits that literacy gave rise to the skepticism that became an unstoppable motive force for development. The literacy thesis — originally pitched by Havelock’s’ 1963 Preface to Plato and Goody and Watt’s 1963 “The consequences of literacy” — proposes that [...]